Attempts have been made in the past to develop a vacuum fitting which is permanently mounted into a wall or floor adjacent to a surface to be swept. Such fittings may be for use in association with either a central vacuum system or a portable vacuum cleaner system. The vacuum fitting ideally opens to permit air suction to flow through the fitting to pick up and carry dirt, debris and the like through the fitting and into a remote collection chamber associated with the vacuum source. Early attempts at such fittings involved cumbersome moving assemblies having nozzles which advanced out into a room to direct the suction to a place where the sweepings were collected. The sweepings would then would then be sucked up through the nozzle and taken away. However, these devices were awkward, expensive, and generally impractical. Examples of these may be found in Canadian patents 642,539, 670,879 and 675,552 to Bierstock.
More lately, there have been a number of devices developed which are somewhat simpler and which provide a fixed vacuum inlet fitting adjacent to a floor to be swept. For example, Klassen Canadian Patent 2,101,484, teaches a device which can be mounted in a floor or a wall and which is connected to the remote source of vacuum so that when a seal in the device is opened, by a foot activated lever, the remote source of vacuum is energized. This causes suction through the opening and removes undesirable sweepings from the surface being swept. Unfortunately, the Klassen device impractically requires that a person maintain their foot on the lever in order to maintain the electrical connection to energize the source of vacuum and also to keep the seal open. This is awkward and impractical as it means that the sweeping must be finished while standing on one foot.
Even more recently, a device to an inventor named Graham has been disclosed in Canadian Patent 2,123,179 which includes a closure member mounted within a housing. A lever extends out through an open front inlet and pivots the closure between two positions which open and close an outlet opening located in a top wall of the housing. A double acting spring is associated with the closure member and acts to hold the closure member in both open and closed positions. In this manner, the unit can be activated by a foot of the user. Sweepings can then be swept up to the mouth of the unit and taken away by the suction. When finished, the operator may again use their foot to move the lever to cause the closure to cover the outlet opening and to disengage the electrical contact. This switches off the remote source of vacuum.
While simple in approach, this device suffers the disability that the foot operated lever or switch extends from the front face of the fitting. Thus the front face must be always open to accommodate the lever. While this may be partially acceptable when the unit is partially hidden, for example, by being installed under a toe rail of a kitchen counter, this opening is not acceptable in, for example a front hall, mud room or other plain view application. The open front means the inside of the device, which often becomes dirty and unattractive over time is in plain view. This require s more maintenance in terms of cleaning and the like.
Further, in use, typically a user will sweep back and forth across the inlet opening to ensure that all of the crumbs or debris are swept up. Such sweeping action often accidentally switches the unit off, because the foot operated lever projects out, unprotected, from the housing. Rapid on/off energization of the central vacuum motor causes undue wear and can lead to premature failure of the motor. Finally, the top outlet opening makes installation awkward, since often the source of vacuum is from below. A top opening requires multiple elbow fittings and short tubing sections to plumb in the connection to a below grade vacuum source.